It is usually said in United States elections that “bread and butter” issues are what drive people to vote and shape their choices, with concerns about economic factors like inflation and the cost of living regularly topping the lists of voters’ priorities.
Further-from-home issues like foreign policy, the wisdom goes, do not decide elections. As one adviser put it in the lead-up to Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid”. At the time, then-President George HW Bush had just ousted Iraqi forces from Kuwait, a foreign policy “win” that did not secure Bush victory at the polls. The notion has since become a staple of election cycles — but historians and analysts warn it is only partially true.
